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Who is this actress ?

19th February 2018, 02:29 AM

Can anybody identify this actress, who plays "Lady Sylvia Grey" in the first episode of KING OF THE UNDERWORLD (Victor M. Gover, 1952) ? - Thank you !

PS - I'm sure she isn't credited, as the 3 women who are mentioned in the credits are Tucker McGuire (who plays in each episode), Ingeborg Wells and Anne Valerie (both playing in the second segment).
This actress was probably listed in the original credits of the episode (The Scarlet Letter) but her name disappeared when Ambassador decided to release three episodes as a "feature", and remade the credits.
The same misadventure happened to Tod Slaughter when the episode originally shot as "Death at the Festival" was theatrically released as "Murder at the Grange", the credits were hastily remade and they forgot to mention the name of the star of the series. And they also mispelled some of the names. Really the big class !
Another example, when "Mother Riley Meets the Vampire" was released in America, as "My Son, the Vampire", the credits were partially remade ans they forgot to mention Arthur Lucan and Bela Lugosi ! They were on the posters, but not on the screen...
Incidentally I have heard that the original episode called "The Scarlet Letter" was recently found in UK, but is this a real British print, or an American print ? I have seen three of the American prints and the credits are so abridged they only mentions the three principals, the director, and the scenarist, and basta ! but if it is an authentic British print, the woman on the photos below is probably credited. But WHO has this print ?

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Thank you very much. It could be her, as she was approximatively 30yo in 1952, the problem being that she worked almost exclusively for TV during the 1950-1955 period, and most of her work was probably erased or lost for a comparizon. The still from "The Invisible Millionaire" was taken in 1963, it's maybe too distant from 1952, but if I got the episode, in analyzing her voice perhaps...

Comment

Katharine Blake appeared in the 1951 film 'Assassin For Hire' alongside Sydney Tafler. This film is available on DVD via Network. There maybe some screenshots on the web from this film which you could then compare against. I must admit that there is a likeness.

Cornershop15:
I found the episode you're talking about, "The Invisible Millionaire" and have been very attentive to the actress Katherine Black, but there is 12 years difference between the two videos and it's very difficult to conclude. We can for example sometimes compare the ears, and their lobe, but here it's difficult because in KING OF THE UNDERWORLD she wears earrings. Or we would have to find an episode or movie from the same period, say 1950/1955. I will ask a friend who has a better hearing than me to analyze the voices. But thnak you very much for this "track", very interesting.

Joe Fraguella: Thank you for the post, but I'm afraid that I can't get Network from France (even the BFI site is forbidden to foreigners, even in paying ! I missed a lot of things for this, and a British friend who lives in Germany has the same problem... but not a German living in UK !). I'm trying to find it on the web, it's sometimes the only way !

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I just found "Assassin for Hire" on Youtube. What's your opinion ?
Cornershop15: apparently you are right. Congratulations for your intuition and... merci beaucoup !
This is also a demonstration of the careless organization of a producing company like Bushey / Ambassador : in 1951 Miss Blake was prominently credited in "Assassin for Hire", shown on the big screen, for another company, and the following year Bushey / Ambassador "forgot" her name in the credits of "King of the Underworld", made from three TV episodes, when she is the first person to appear on the screen !

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Glad to have helped, Sweeney Todd. Browsing her filmography, I'd forgotten Kath's brief role as a Waitress in
the film Hunted (released the same year as King of the Underworld) and can offer you one more comparison:

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I just found "Hunted" and watched the scene where Bogarde and the little boy are in the restaurant, and noticed immediately Miss Blake, there is no doubt that she is the woman appearing in the first scenes of KING OF THE UNDERWORLD. She was probably credited in the original featurette, but these credits were hastily remade when Ambassador was unable to sell the series to British television and decided to "paste-up" episodes together to make the "feature". It's the only episode of the entire series of 13 for which the BFI didn't have a single still when I bought stills from the other 12, many many years ago.
Now I just hope that the second "feature", MURDER AT SCOTLAND YARD, will surface some day. It was also formed of three episodes, I have the first one, wearing the same title, on video, as the series was shown on American TV back in 1953...